lundi 29 septembre 2008

When I saw last Kawamata's pieces in Versaille I thought first to the eel trap (korobashi) that I bought In Japan, but when you look closer to contemporary sculpture in Japan you can find something pretty close to Kawamata's work that might have inspired him...Its called Bamboo art or Textile art and it's seems to come from Ikebana (japanase flower composition art) and Ikebana basket .This arty basketery create amazing shapes, skins and spaces. Following some of the best artists of that movement.

Here is last Jeff Koons' exhibition in the most visited appartments in Chateau de Versailles. I would say it is a very humourous one (here is the vaccum work in a room decorated by paintings of women) even if a lot of people does not understand it like this, grumble all along the exhibition and exclaim how disgraceful this within a so important architecture !Exhibition will run until december 14th.

After this post about Tadashi Kawamata's workshop in Versailles' school of architecture, here is his own installation in La Maréchalerie. Like the students' work, Kawamata uses crates and little plastic joints. In the inside, in order to create a new volume, crates are linked to a net hung by cables to Maréchalerie's wooden beams.Exhibition is open until december 13rd but the outdoor installation will be took apart on october 6th.

Today's Singapore first Grand Prix organised in night time and within the city like in Monaco. I'm just a bit disapointed cause I thought Formula 1 would have lights like in Le Mans but apparently not...

samedi 27 septembre 2008

Few more pictures of K.Wacshsmann work about structure network that show his amazing skillz to create beautiful structure jonction, I discovered that six month ago thanks to Ed Keller. Wacshsmann as bucky Fuller was comissioned by the US Air Force (plane hangar) to develop some of those structures.

Presentation Text in Typological Formations. Renewable building types and the city (AA publications)

In Singapore, urban planning projects are subject to stringent control by the state. This project resists the formation of a state-engineered "Generic Empire" by inverting the skyscraper to provide a typological urban framework that cultivates difference through the coexistence and participation of multiple types and skateholders. Marina Bay is 139 hectares area of reclaimed land that has remained barren for a decade because of the economic crisis in the region. It was relentlessly promoted by the former goverment, to no avail; now a new political leadership is trying a different approach, relaunching the original failed masterplan for the site in a repackaged form, complete with a series of iconic high-rise structures that promise to generate a spectacular skyline. The masterplan proliferates a single building type and stubbornly resists the participation of all other scales, types or investments. The simple homogenous plane of regular blocks can only be occupied by mega-corporations and skyscrapers. As a consequence, the collective public ground plane is forsaken. Lacking the flexibility to involve local etablishment and bussinesses in the development of smaler building types, the site passively awaits huge investments by global corporations. To subvert the endless proliferation of these skyscrapers across the city grid, this project makes strategic use of the overt political control of urbanism in Singapore. To enforce difference and freedom, it inverts the skyscraper's massing, forcing it to relinquish its control over the ground plane and make way for a multi-layered urban plan. The enables the immediate activation of smaller building types and creates multiple "clustered" volumes that encourages partnership between both private and public bodies. Departing from the state sponsored, postcard image of a fantasy skyline, the new urban plan of inverted skyscrapers presents an image of perpetual activity, creating an array of differential developmental scales that are less dependent on global economic cycles. Development can now incrementally begin to form a continuously shaded open space, providing the necessary level of comfort to sustain sociability in Singapore's hot and humid tropical climate. This project challenges and reconciles issues of control and flexibility in urban planning. It proposes that the best to sustain difference and participation is not to relinquish control, but conversely, to intensify it.

mardi 23 septembre 2008

Oldest parts of the BNF building (Richelieu Site) in Paris are from the XVIIth century but the library's jewels, salle Labrouste (up) and salle ovale (down) has been respectively built in 1854 (Henri Labrouste architect) and in 1916 (Jean-Louis Pascal architect).